well-featured, and this Luke had notable gifts. He could
read and write. The farmer spoke well of him, saying, "He has
rewarded me many times over. Since his coming, thanks to the Lord,
my farm prospers: and in particular he has a wonderful way with the
beasts. Cattle or sheep, fowls, dogs, the wild things even, come to
him almost without a call." He had also (the farmer told me) a
wonderful knack of taking clay or mud and moulding it with his hands
to the likeness of living creatures, of all sorts and sizes. In the
kitchen by the great fire he would work at these images by hours
together, to the marvel of everyone: but when the image was made,
after a little while he always destroyed it; nor was it ever begged
by anyone for a gift, there being a belief that, being fashioned by
more than a man's skill, such things could only bring ill-luck to the
possessors of them.

'For months then I heard no more of Grace Pascoe's lover: nor (though
he now came every Sunday to church) did I ever see looks pass between
the Vicarage pew (where she sat) and the Vellancoose pew (where he).
But at the end of the year she came to me and told me she had given
her word to a young farmer of Goldsithney, John Magor by name. In a
worldly way this was a far better match for her than to take a
nameless and landless man. Nor knew I anything against John Magor
beyond some stray wildness natural to youth. He came of clean blood.
He was handsome, almost as the other; tall, broad of chest, a
prizewinner at wrestling-matches; and of an age when a good wife is
usually a man's salvation.

'I called their banns, and in due time married them. On the
wedding-day, after the ceremony, I returned from church to find the
young man Luke awaiting me by my house-door; who very civilly desired
me to walk over to Vellancoose with him, which I did. There, taking
me aside to an unused linhay, he showed me the sculpture, telling me
(who could not conceal my admiration) that he had meant it for John
and Grace Magor (as she now was) for a wedding-gift, but that the
young woman had cried out against it as immodest and, besides,
unlucky. On the first count I could understand her rejecting such a
gift; for the folk of these parts know nothing of statuary and count
all nakedness immodest. Indeed, I wondered that the bridegroom had
not taken Luke's freedom in ill part, and I said so: to which he
answered, smiling, that no man ever quarrelled with him or could